1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate, in general, to storage of computer data and particularly to systems and methods for self-organizing distributed heterogeneous storage of computer data.
2. Relevant Background
Computer data increasingly permeates almost every aspect of day-to-day life. As the world transitions to a more and more digital environment, there exists along with that transition a requirement that the data be reliable, efficient and preserved. File cabinets filled with volumes of paper documents are being replaced by disks and tapes holding the repository of digital information. As the computing environment becomes more mobile and the volume of data more substantial, a dilemma is created between the need to maintain a reliable and efficient means to store data and the ability for one or more users to access that data anywhere in the world
Storing data on a distributed network is well known in the art. Storage area networks (“SAN”) represent one approach to store vast amounts of data on multiple nodes coupled together to form a network. Users access the network to retrieve and store data relieving the need to maintain a large local storage capacity. SANs however are typically dedicated resources optimized for the storage of data. This specialization comes at the cost of access time depending on the locality of the user. Local users would typically find latency issues with respect to data access insignificant while users at more distant or remote locations would experience significant and often unacceptable delays. And while portions of the SAN may be local to any one user, the data that the user seeks is not necessarily stored in that local component.
Reliability of the data is also of significant concern with respect to data storage. Backing up or replicating data to promote the data's reliably is well known. Techniques to replicate and store data vary from copying and storing at a different location an entire image of a system to snapshots of a particular operating environment to copy-on-write technology. These and other techniques however fail to address a user who is in Seattle one week, Paris the next and Hong Kong shortly thereafter. Such a user would experience a wide variance in the ability to access and store data.